Abstract

Graphs are closely related to quantum error-correcting codes: every stabilizer code is locally equivalent to a graph code and every codeword stabilized code can be described by a graph and a classical code. For the construction of good quantum codes of relatively large block length, concatenated quantum codes and their generalizations play an important role. We develop a systematic method for constructing concatenated quantum codes based on “graph concatenation,” where graphs representing the inner and outer codes are concatenated via a simple graph operation called “generalized local complementation.” Our method applies to both binary and nonbinary concatenated quantum codes as well as their generalizations.